Robot Planes Get Their Own Airport... in Wales

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The world's first airport for unmanned aircraft is opening in
rural Wales and officials say it could be the first step to
getting human and robot -piloted craft together in the same
airspace.

The United Kingdom's Civilian Aviation Authority has just granted
permission for both the West Wales Airport in Aberporth and a
500-square mile airspace to be dedicated to unmanned aircraft.
General aviation pilots can still fly through the region, as well
as Royal Air Force pilots who conduct training missions nearby.

The Welsh government hopes the drone airport and airspace will
draw commercial firms who are currently banned from testing their
aircraft in the United States except in restricted military
airspace.

"We can use the airspace to start proving the integration and
manned and unmanned systems," said Carl Davies, project
manager at the West Wales UAV Centre and Qinetiq, a UK-based
defense contractor.

The 4,100-foot runway will be used to run test flights of the
British Army's new Watchkeeper WK450, which is being built by an
Israeli firm to conduct reconnaissance, surveillance, weather and
other targeting missions. Until now, the drone has been flying
over the Irish Sea. The new airspace extends 40 miles inland and
extends over several rural Welsh communities with a population of
about 10,000 people.

The airfield has also been used to test the SELEX Galileo
"Falco," an Italian-made unmanned airplane, which is now being
used by the Pakistan military to patrol border areas with
Afghanistan, according to news reports.

Davies and others say they expect the new Welsh airport to
attract companies who want to test of drone aircraft for
commercial and scientific applications as well as established
military missions. Environmental monitoring is especially high up
on the list.

"We can do forestry, we can do whale-watching, we can do pipeline
surveys or even peat bog monitoring," Davies told Discovery News.

The erosion of peat bogs releases large amounts of carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere, as well as robbing the region of an
important natural sponge for floodwaters.

A similar mix of drone and general aviation aircraft have been
flying in Australia for the past three years in pilot program
known as "Smart Skies." Based at a rural airfield outside
Brisbane, contractors tested new radar systems and flew Boeing's
ScanEagle drone alongside small airplanes. The results of the
trial are being used to develop new flight rules in Australia.

Here in the United States, flying drone aircraft in commercial
airspace has been more difficult. The Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) limits drone aircraft to operating under 400
feet and within an operator's line of sight. There are some
experimental airspaces available in New Mexico, Oregon and
Oklahoma, but FAA officials must be notified about flights weeks
ahead of time.

FAA officials told a conference of unmanned systems that they
hope to have new flight rules for unmanned aircraft ready by
2025. Supporters of the UAV industry say that's too long.

"Industry wants to see it before then," said Paul McDuffee,
business development executive for InSitu, a Boeing subsidiary.
"We can't wait for 2025."